Bill
Frist is Republican Senate Majority Leader. If he doesn't
have the basic viciousness of a Tom
DeLay or Newt
Gingrich, he certainly equals them in hypocrisy,
dishonesty, and lack of concern for the well-being of
our country. Consider these two events side by side.

A
hypocrite's hypocrite
As this is written Sen. Frist is appalled, truly appalled,
that Senate democrats think the Senate select Committee
on Intelligence might be able to extend their investigation
of intelligence failures to the White House. The
Washington Post quotes him as saying the
democrat who wrote a leaked memo on the topic should
"identify himself or herself . . . disavow this
partisan attack in its entirety" and deliver "a
personal apology" to Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.),
chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.

Only
then, according to Frist, "will it be possible
for the committee to resume its work in an effective
and bipartisan manner a manner deserving of the
confidence of other members of the Senate and the executive
branch."

We
are left breathless at the senator's exquisite sensitivity
to partisanship, the deep psychic pain he must feel
in contemplating that political opponents might want
to take advantage of epochal incompetence on the part
of his party.

But
consider the following:

In
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them, Al Franken
writes that during the 2002 Senatorial campaign Paul
Wellstone was running against Norm Coleman. The Republican
NRSC ran an ad called 'Pork' that attacked Wellstone

for
voting 'to spend thousands of dollars to control seaweed
in Maui,' claiming that he prioritized seaweed control
over national defense. In fact, Wellstone did vote
for S.1216, as did Strom Thurmond, Trent Lott and
84 other senators. That bill did appropriate the seaweed
control spending but it also provided $21 billion
for veterans' health care, $27 billion for veterans'
compensation and pensions, and block grants to assist
New York City's recovery from 9/11. The NRSC was chaired
that year by Bill Frist, who later replaced Lott as
Senate majority leader. Before the memorial, Frist
spoke with the Wellstones' older son, David, who later
recounted the conversation to me.

"'I'm
sorry about your parents and your sister,' Frist told
David.
"'Did you authorize the seaweed ad against my
dad?' David asked.
"'Yes,' said Frist.
"'And did you vote for the seaweed bill?'
"There was a pause. They both knew that the answer
was yes. Finally, Frist said, 'It wasn't personal.'
(pp. 179-180)

Frist
lies about Iraq
Frist is equally without integrity involving the Iraq
War. On June 26, 2003, on the Today Show, Frist told
the American people regarding the issue of Iraq and
weapons of mass destruction: "I'm not sure that's
the major reason we went to war."

BUT
consider his earlier words to us, before the falsehoods
of the WMD claims became obvious to all reasonable intelligent
people:

"We
simply cannot live in fear of a ruthless dictator,
aggressor and terrorist such as Saddam Hussein, who
possesses the world's most deadly weapons.
(March 31, 2003)

"Let
there be no mistake about our Nation's purpose in
confronting Iraq -- Saddam Hussein's regime poses
a clear threat to the people of United States, its
friends and its allies, and it is a threat that we
must address now. "
(March 7, 2003)

"Getting
rid of Saddam Hussein's regime is our best inoculation.
Destroying once and for all his weapons of disease
and death is a vaccination for the world."
(March 16, 2003)

"The
United States . . . is now at war "so we will
not ever see" what terrorists could do "if
supplied with weapons of mass destruction by Saddam
Hussein."
(March 20, 2003)

The
man without qualities
It takes a special kind of person to lie to animal shelters,
where people take their pets they can no longer keep,
in the hope that they will find a good home. To tell
them he will adopt them as pets, and then take them
to his labs to be operated on, where all died.

Bill
Frist, the man who lied to fraudulently get cats who
then all died under his knife has not improved his ethics
or his compassion since. He uses his background as a
physician to urge people to trust him, while even lying
about his medical experience

But
this time he is using his dishonesty and hypocrisy not
to feather his nest as a well paid doctor of dubious
morality, not to further his political career as a sleazy
manipulator, but to put our national security at risk
by placing partisanship ahead of truth, prohibiting
investigations the American people are owed to protect
his allies in the White House and then accusing
others of being partisan.